


OC-tober 2019

by Eiiri



Series: Chiaroscuro [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Character Study, Half Vulcan, M/M, OC-tober, Vulcan Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-10 18:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20856506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiiri/pseuds/Eiiri
Summary: 31 ficlets and blurbs for OC-tober 2019 about my half-Vulcan OC Leryk from my Star Trek: TOS fic, Chiaroscuro.Update: Yeahhhh this is never getting finished.  October got away from me.  Might try again next year.





	1. Character Introduction

Leryk was a mess. Half Vulcan, bastard, runaway, space hobo with a short temper and an allergy to himself. Actually telling him he's a mess, though, is probably the second stupidest thing anyone could do. The absolute stupidest thing, of course, was to call him Vulcan where he could hear you, or where anyone who'd tell him what you said could hear you. Wisest to just never call that boy Vulcan, no matter what the pointed ears, the copper blood that showed in the soft jade of his lips and the corners of his eyes, or the bio-sensors say.


	2. Their Immediate Family

Leryk never knew his farther, the source of the humanity he staked his identity on. The woman who gave birth to him, though, her husband and their children—they never treated him like family. That house with its Watcher-warmed walls had always been cold to him, so when, one day not long after his celebrationless twelfth birthday, he found himself alone and onobserved and certain no one would be back for some time since they had _left him behind _while they went off to some event he was deemed “too volatile” for, he left. He threw all the things that were his, all the things that weren't his but he might need, and a few things that weren't his but were of value into a pack and left. He felt like an odd sight, walking alone through the streets of the city, but he had a purpose, and anyone walking with purpose, even a child, attracts less scrutiny than one unsure.

He knew better than to ask any Vulcan ships for passage, or any Federation ships. He wound up on a small freighter with a mostly human crew at first. It took charming and begging his way on to a couple more vessels, but he eventually wound up somewhere he'd never heard of, somewhere he could stay: a ramshackle little town on Baliel Alpha Six. And that's where he met Bryn. Bryn, with his scuffed of boots, skinned knees, freckled nose, and lightning smile found Leryk standing in the middle of the grey gravel mainstreet, bag on his shoulder, without a clue where to go now that he was here. He looked Leryk over, cocked his head, and asked, “Hey, you just get here?”

Leryk nodded.

“You got somewhere to stay?”

“No.”

“You can come with me, we got room.” Bryn held out a hand. Leryk stared at it for a long moment, then hesitantly, carefully reached out and took it. That touch was warm, and Leryk never wanted to let it go. He did, about five minutes later, when Bryn showed him through into the low, long communal home near the edge of town where the settlement faded into rolling fields of twisting purple grasses. He let go, but was never without that warmth again, because that home _was _home, and that stranger his own age he met in that grey gravel street was the first member of his family to come into his life.


	3. Their Friends

It was rare that Vulcan children had “friends.” They had schoolmates, age peers, companions, even playmates but the idea of “friend” carried a cultural connotation, a weight, that made it presumptuous and prematureto apply the term to even the closest and strongest of childhood attachments. Friendship was an adult relation—adolescent at the very least. It took years to be sure of.

As a child, Leryk was _very _sure none of his peers would ever be his friends. And he was right. Bryn was his first friend, and absolutely was his _friend_, with all the gravity that word has in Vulcan, within days of their meeting. He also taught Leryk the human view of friendship, which Leryk quickly adopted. He had friends on Baliel Alpha Six—other students at the little school house with its sun bleached walls, the older girl he and Bryn would help tend her flock of scaly-backed insectivores, the grumpy old blue-skinned fellow with one antenna who ran the general store and roped the towndoctor and a couple of the traveling merchants into a running project to find what few things Leryk could eat without becoming ill. It hurt to leave them all behind when he and Bryn left the planet. They made more friends, though, some brief, some lasting. The bartender on Hestia-1, an ambassador's wife, a starship captain. People who were there for him when he needed them; people he would always rememberfondly no matter how long he knew them, no matter if he ever saw them again.


	4. Their Earliest Memory

There was a fountain in the entryway of the house on Vulcan, the house with the Watcher-warmed walls. It would have been impractical, illogical to have the fountain outside. It would have been wasteful, all the water would have evaporated away. Inside, it sung softly and helped keep the house cool. Leryk was very small, having not long since learned to walk unassisted, and the edge of the fountain was about as high as his chest, a good height to keep a hand on for comfort even if not strictly needed for balance. He could hear his mother in the next room, talking to the man who was not his father.TheWatcher shone through the tiles to either side of the door, throwing slanting blocks of color on the floor. The urge to step on them was strong, to watch his bare feet turn red, then blue, then gold, then the wrong kind of green, but that would mean letting go of the fountain.


	5. As a Child

“So, _why _is Kaesa crying?” Leryk asked without looking up from the word puzzle he was working on.

Bryn, who had just returned from the half-hour ordeal of making sure Kaesa wasn't _dying _or something since she'd run in and to her room utterly sobbing, levered himself up from where he'd flopped onto his bed and sighed. “Because Yutar kissed Miki.”

Leryk looked over slowly and tilted his head. “And that's...the end of the world?”

“Apparently.” Bryn shrugged.

“That's dumb,” Leryk said shortly.

“I know! But I couldn't tell her that.” Bryn stood and stretched and came over to sit by Leryk. “She _likes _Yutar, y'know, so, yeah, it's dumb but she's upset.”

Leryk snorted and shook his head. “Teenagers.”

“We're teenagers, Leryk,” Bryn reminded him.

“We're thirteen, that hardly counts!”


	6. Their Aspirations

Leryk rolled his neck and took a breath and ran a finger inside the collar of his uniform in the vain hope that maybe this time it would make it feel less stifling and stiff. He stared at himself in mirror of the cubical sink—hair up and back in a tight sleek twist, perfectly professional, the red of the uniform making the green of his lips pop in a way he didn't think he liked. He checked the time; it was still ten minutes to his first class and the lecture hall was just around the corner from the bathroom.

First class on his first day at Starfleet Academy. Even with letters of recommendation from two of the Fleet's most well-respected officers, her could hardly believe he'd been accepted. It opened up a whole universe of opportunities his broke hobo ass hardly dared to dream of—a ladder he could conceivably climb all the way to his own captaincy, or farther, if he really wanted to. _If _he wanted to. For now, he'd settle for not failing out. Hell, he'd settle for getting through the day without puking.


	7. TheirBest Memory

Eyes closed, laying in the sun on the beach, digging his feet into the sand just past the edge of their towel, listening to Bryn gush about the effect some gravitational effect had on stars while he played with Leryk's hair. Warm, comfortable, companionable, safe. Just a little moment out of millions. A good moment. The best.


	8. Their Living Space

Leryk didn't really do beds, he did nests. When he first came to Baliel Alpha Six, the communal home Bryn lived in had plenty of _room_ but was lacking in _mattresses_ so the trio of older women who acted as parents to the assortment of mismatched children had provided Leryk with a pile of cushions and blankets and pillows of various shapes and sizes. That first night he discovered he much preferred burrowing in and cuddling up over the minimalistic, logical, _sufficient _sleeping mats he'd grown up with. They never got around to getting him a mattress. He never cared.

When, at sixteen, he and Bryn moved out and endeavored to build their own home, mostly cobbled together from decommissioned bulkheads and outfitted with appliances discarded as broken that they'd fixed up for themselves, they built a bed for Bryn. They just padded a section of floor for Leryk.

After they left Baliel Alpha Six, they both got used to sleeping wherever they could, but when they next found stability in the dormitory block of the Academy, Leryk crammed about a dozen pillows and at least as many blankets into his single sized cot. Somehow, both he and Bryn managed to fit in the cot along with the pillows. The bed that was supposed to be Bryn's mostly got used as a couch

On his first assignment aboard a ship, Leryk used all his replicator privileges for the first two weeks to build up his collection of bedding.


	9. Something Very Important to Them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some bullying and emotional mistreatment of a child in this entry.

Human. Leryk was human, not Vulcan. There were things about him that were Vulcan—the shape of his ears, the color of his blood—but there was so much else that _wasn't_. Just physically, the curve of his brows, the set of his teeth, and the structure of his heart, if not its placement, were distinctly human. More importantly, his heart was human in the metaphorical, emotional sense. He'd always been quick to laugh, quick to anger, slow to hate or love though he did so deeply, and what love he gave, his soul needed some reflection of back, as is human nature.

The woman who gave birth to him told Leryk about his human father—in the same breath, she told him his existence was a mistake, his creation an error in judgement. She gave him a human father, then spent his childhood trying to make him be Vulcan, punishing him for being too human, being quick to laugh, which only made him quicker to anger. Quieter about it, maybe, but quicker.

Alone, at night, hiding under his merely sufficient blanket with a tablet, he'd read and watch human stories and see himself in those characters, the way they screamed and cried and joked and hugged the people they cared about. They _felt _like he did and they _showed it_. He didn't dare do the same. He'd learned better.

Once he had come home crying from school and he tried to tell his mother what had happened with the kids at school. She told him it was his fault, his behavior had prompted their comments, it was a logical progression, and he was only making it worse by responding emotionally. It was un-Vulcan.

“But I'm _not_ Vulcan!” he cried, still wiping at his eyes.

“Of course you are,” she said. “You're my child, and I am Vulcan, so you are Vulcan. If you would endeavor to adjust your behavior accordingly and control your emotions, you wouldn't have these problems, Leryk.”

He stopped telling her things after that. Tried to stop feeling, or at least to not show it. He made a deal with himself that he could laugh and cry in the dark at night when he watched and read his stories.

On Baliel Alpha Six he could laugh and cry and joke and scream whenever he wanted. Bryn was a firm believer in screaming into pillows to feel better if you were angry or stressed and it _worked_. Leryk could hug his friends when he wanted to, sweep them right off their feet as he got taller, and laugh as they laughed at the surprise of it.

In California, filling out applications for Starfleet, he gave himself a human surname, put his species as human and listed “half Vulcan” as a medical condition before his slew of food sensitivities and that one recurring hormonal issue. He might have listed himself as mixed, for medical reasons, if that form had that as an option. That was an oversight on Starfleet's end. He stood by what he'd put down, though. He was human. He'd found his humanity as a child in all the ways he wasn't Vulcan, and claimed it as his own on Baliel Alpha Six. His humanity had saved him, made him, and he was not going to give it up, not even just on paper, not for a technicality.


End file.
